Candie Dominguez was born in San Antonio in 1979. Her father was addicted to heroin. Her mother moved the children from house to house to escape his abuse. But mom had problems of her own and could not care for the kids. Eventually the children were split up. Candie’s life became so dominated by physical and sexual abuse that she left home at eight. (She ran away at eight years old!)
She joined the Mexican Mafia, finding a family of sorts in the criminal organization. She and others slept in cars—sometimes stealing a car just to have a place to sleep for the night. When Candie began having children at 15, she often found herself unable to feed them. Then her cousin, Jose Menchaca, stepped up, scrounging food from the dumpsters behind a McDonalds just so Candie and her children would have something to eat.
She says Menchaca saved her life. But in 2014, Menchaca was murdered in a story too grisly to repeat here. In 2018, Candie was one of three people charged with the murder—of the very cousin she credits with saving her life. It is a messy story, and the subject of two episodes of the Netflix show, “I AM A KILLER,” (season 6, episodes 1 and 2). (I verified these facts from newspaper articles available on the web.) In 2019, Candie Dominguez was sentenced to thirty years in prison for her part in the murder of her cousin.
I had one overwhelming impression as I watched the opening minutes of the television show documenting her case, and it was this—if you made a list of bad ways to begin a childhood, Candie’s life checks every box: Parents on drugs, father abuses children physically and sexually, parents split up, mom values drugs over children, child runs away at 8 years old, is raised in a criminal organization complete with enemies, feuds, violence, and death, she has no education, no exposure to the gospel, no job skills, no positive influences, no options.
To put it another way, life is hard enough when you have the best of everything. It is hard even when you have all the best habits. Imagine having none of them. Candie’s life was on a path of destruction from Day One.
We happened to be in San Antonio when our daughter took her first steps. We celebrated and immediately began pointing her down a good path. When Candie Dominguez took her first steps in the Alamo City, her parents placed her on the path of destruction and told her to start walking. And that may have been the last thing they ever did for her.
There is a path of destruction and a path of success. Think of it in construction terms: there is the demolition crew and there is the construction crew. Making choices that follow God’s word will keep you off the demolition crew and put you on the construction crew. God’s word will change you from a DESTROYER to a BUILDER.
David writes, “By the works of your lips, I have kept myself from the path of the Destroyer” Psalm 17:4. That is, the Word of God will keep you off the path of destruction. Instead, the word of God will lead you to the mountain of God.
“The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and they that dwell therein… Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord, or who shall stand in His holy place? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart … he shall receive the blessing of the Lord” Psalm 24:1-5.
God, thank you for blessing us with your word that guides us away from the path of the Destroyer. Make us builders. May we follow your path, live productive lives, and “ascend into the hill of the Lord.” Show us how to walk with you and how to lead young people to do the same. Help us to draw others to walk the narrow path that leads to life, Matthew 7:14.
ΑΩ
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